Question

I am working on a rough draft of a gui, looking at different options. I was hopping to use a JList to show text in a JTextArea based on what item is selected. You can see the JList on the left and the JTextArea in the center.

Or is there a better way to do this? I am already using tabs that will be used for a broad category. I saw that the CardLayout, but don’t quite like the look. Any tips?

Answer 1

Well, you can use a ListSelectionListener to set the content accordingly..

 JList list = new JList(someArrayofData);
 list.addListSelectionListener(new ListSelectionListener(){
      public void valueChanged(ListSelectionEvent e){
            int selectedIndex = list.getSelectedIndex();
            //refresh the content based on the index
            setContent(selectedIndex);
      }
});

Its hard to say which gui layout will work the best for you without knowing what the application is for.